Animals as Leaders are an instrumental math/space/progressive metal band formed by guitarist Tosin Abasi in 2007 after his former Metalcore band, Reflux, disbanded. Some of Abasi's guitar work in his former band was taken notice of by Prosthetic Records and they asked if he could do some solo work for them, but he turned down the offer because he thought doing a solo album all on his own would be arrogant. After taking a break from music for a year to study the guitar, Abasi got back into the music scene and formed this very band in 2007 with bassist Chebon Littlefield who left the band almost immediately after it was formed. In 2009 they released their first Self-Titled Album with guitarist/keyboardist/producer Misha Mansoor and gained drummer Matt Halpern, who quit and was replaced by Navene Koperweis and then later replaced by Matt Garstka in 2012, and guitarist Javier Reyes.
They're one of the very limited number of Djent bands metal heads don't hate, though they've long since outgrown the title of a Djent band.
Current band members
- Tosin Abasi: 2007-now
- Javier Reyes: 2009-now
- Matt Garstka: 2012-now
Studio albums:
- Animals as Leaders (2009)
- Weightless (2011)
- The Joy of Motion (2014)
- The Madness of Many (2016)
- Parrhesia (2022)
Animals as Leaders provides examples of the following tropes:
- All Drummers Are Animals: Matt can go to town on those drums during his live performances.
- Averted on their first album as the drums were programmed by the album's producer Misha Mansoor.
- Black and Nerdy: In a musical manner. Tosin has a great understanding of musical theory and puts all of his knowledge into his music.
- Genre Mashup: Space Rock mixed with Progressive Metal, Math Rock, Jazz, Classical and IDM. It's crazy.
- Groove Metal/Progressive Metal: One of the bigger names in it.
- I Am the Band: Tosin wrote almost everything on the self-titled debut album. Subverted since The Joy of Motion, as Javier Reyes and Matt Gartska made significant contributions to the songwriting.
- Instrumentals
- Lead Drummer: Matt Garstka is famous for his technical ability and is also a fairly big name in gospel drumming.
- Loudness War: Unfortunately, they first album fell quite victim to it with the programmed drums being mixed in extremely loud.
- Nobody Loves the Bassist: They've never had a bass player and use other methods to get bass frequencies into their songs.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Tosin liked to wear smart casual or a suit and tie, sometimes in conjunction with a fedora hat in the early days of the band.
- Shout-Out: The band name itself is a shout out to the novel Ishmael.
- Uncommon Time: They are a prog band, after all.
